Empire has returned as both a serious subject of scholarly interest and,
arguably, a serious object of international diplomacy. The attacks of
11 September 2001 and the ensuing ‘war on terror’ revived
calls for the United States to assume (if it had not done so already)
the mantle of empire. Exactly what kind of empire the United States is
supposed to be—or to become—remains unclear. For those attempting
to define it, the United States has been variously described as an ‘incoherent’,
‘liberal’, ‘virtual’, or ‘consensual empire’.

Whatever we call it, the United States today is not like the empires
of the past. We can get a sense of the difficulty of defining the American
empire by reflecting on the metaphors used to describe this ‘new’
imperial power. Conservative British historian Niall Ferguson, for example,
has recently called the United States a ‘liberal empire’ (p.
27), an ‘empire by invitation’ (p. 87), an ‘ephemeral
empire’ (p. 204), an ‘informal empire’ (p. 206), a ‘debtor
empire’ (p. 279), and most idiosyncratically a ‘sedentary
colossus … [a] strategic couch potato’ (p. 295)! Ferguson’s
metaphorical acrobatics reflect an old problem in writing about American
imperialism, both pro and con; that is, how to reconcile the tensions
between the brutal mechanics of imperial rule, and the ideological commitment
of the United States to liberal and democratic values.

The United States, Ferguson argues, is the best hope for liberal democracy
across the globe. He provocatively claims that America should use its
power, like the British did in the 19th century, to export liberal values,
democratic institutions, and free trade, and thereby maintain a global
‘Pax Americana’. Ferguson’s worry, though, is that the
United States is not enough of an empire. More precisely, American
citizens are unwilling to see themselves and their nation as an empire.
Ultimately, he argues, this failure will have severe repercussions because
it means that America will not show the nerve to do what is necessary
to sustain a global empire (pp. 24–29). Perhaps more importantly,
they will also fail to set their own house in order (of which, more later).

Whatever we call it, the United
States is not like the empires of the past.

Ferguson contends that the lessons of successful imperial power (which
he draws mainly from the British experience) require the United States
to commit to the logic of imperial power. This means that they must be
prepared to apply maximum force when needed (he cites Vietnam as an example
of America’s failure to apply enough force (p. 96); but they
must also try to avert the need for brute force by stringing their imperial
subjects along with misinformation about their real intentions. Like the
British Empire, Ferguson contends, the US Empire speaks the language of
liberal values and free trade (pp. 183–99), but the United States
has shown itself reluctant to conquer and hold territory, preferring a
strategy of relatively quick intervention and regime change (p. 13). This
policy is unlikely to work in the myriad failed and failing states around
the world.

Ferguson blames this disastrous global situation on decolonisation, and
asks whether some peoples might not be better off under ‘imperial
governance’ requiring the ‘partial or complete suspension
of their national sovereignty’ (p. 170). He dismisses the United
Nations, Europe, China, and NATO as alternatives to, or rivals of, the
imperial power of the United States (pp. 148–49, 256, 261). Like
it or not, the United States is the only entity able to provide a solution.
To do so, they must take a leaf out of the British book of empire, and
do what Britain did in Egypt. The United States must intervene with sufficient
force, constantly claim to be keen to leave, but remain firmly in place
for as long as it takes to ensure that domestic institutions are well
and truly secured (pp. 222–23).

In making this case, Ferguson betrays the hubris of the professional
historian. In drawing putative lessons from history, one is left with
the firm impression that the lives of actual human beings don’t
count for much. Of course state failure is a problem. But it seems
rash to blame it on decolonisation without taking account of how newly
independent nations have been subjected to an international economic regime
that reflects the interests of the developed economies (many of them former
imperial powers). Similarly, it is doubtful that the United States could
maintain the careful duplicity that Ferguson associates with British control
of Egypt (assuming that he is right about that). It is unlikely that American
protestations that they want to leave Iraq would make any difference to
the militants of Fallujah or Ramadi. Developments in military and communications
technology mean that whatever kind of empire might exist today, it would
have to operate in a very different way to the British or any other empire
of the past.

Ferguson betrays the hubris of
the professional historian.

Like Ferguson, Chalmers Johnson is aware of tensions between imperial
realities and liberal democratic pretensions, but he takes the latter
rather more seriously. The current United States empire he argues, is
in flagrant contradiction with its liberal and democratic traditions.
Johnson and Ferguson agree, however, that the real turning point in recent
global history was not the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, but the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The post-Cold War environment of
newly independent, but economically parlous states opened the way for
the United States to extend its strategic control of oil reserves, and
to enhance its tactical, geo-political presence (Johnson pp. 217–53).
Thus, the United States opted for a highly militarised empire represented
by the myriad of large and small US bases around the world (725 at last
count) (pp. 24, 156–60). For Johnson, these bases act not only as
a reminder of the American presence, but also as a mechanism of US power,
a ‘skeleton’ of empire (p. 187). The costs of maintaining
this empire are high in both money and material (pp. 102–119). Another
high cost has been the loss of democratic oversight and control of the
military (pp. 121–30). Perhaps, then, if Johnson is right, it is
not that Americans don’t want an empire, but that they don’t
know they have one!

It is tempting to equate foreign bases with imperial power, but American
military presence does not necessarily correlate with political domination.
British sociologist Michael Mann argues that far from creating greater
security for the United States, its network of foreign bases creates greater
hostility and insecurity (p. 22). Mann’s central thesis is that
the United States is an unrivalled global power, but the more it exerts
its power, the more deeply it becomes embroiled in dilemmas of its own
making. If America is an empire, he writes, it is a peculiarly ‘incoherent’
empire: despite its massive military might, the United States apparently
has little or no capacity to build (or re-build) nations (pp. 80–97).
And while the ideological power of American cultural values is ubiquitous,
these values seem to excite as much hostility as admiration (pp. 118–120).
Finally, the United States has blundered badly in the struggle against
terrorism, failing to recognise that a military ‘solution’
will simply fuel more terrorism (pp. 160–170). Nonetheless, Mann
(along with Barber) is generally more optimistic than Ferguson or Johnson.
For Mann, an enlightened policy of multilateralism holds the key to the
struggle against terrorism, failed and ‘rogue’ states. Most
importantly, he contends, the world does not need an American (or any
other) empire: genuinely multilateral institutions are a better and safer
bet than American hegemony (pp. 264–65). The question of American
empire, then, is a non-starter. In Mann’s view, the United States
simply ‘does not have imperial political powers. The Age of Empire
has gone.’ (p. 97).

If America is an empire, Mann
writes, it is a peculiarly ‘incoherent’ one.

Mann’s thesis is not misguided, but it does ignore the ubiquity
of indecision and incoherence in all empires. The ancient Athenian statesman
Pericles, for instance, traced the ‘imperial dignity’ of Athens
to its willingness to conquer, which entailed both harsh sacrifice at
home and incurring hatred and envy abroad. Empire, he told the wavering
Athenians, ‘is like a tyranny’ and like any tyranny their
empire could not perhaps be morally justified. Most importantly however,
having achieved an empire, the Athenians could not afford to let it go.
To do so would invite disorder and ruin. Nonetheless, as Polybius, historian
of Rome’s empire, warned, even the mightiest empires face inevitable
decay and collapse. Significantly then, empire holds out the promise of
order and peace, but also presents the peril of decline into chaos.

The United States is, perhaps despite itself, committed to an imperial
task of securing a global order defined in large measure by its own interests.
Nonetheless, if contemporary observers of American society are right,
Americans today (like Pericles’ Athenians) are also unwilling to
pay the high economic and moral costs of empire. But they probably have
little choice. Empires have always been uncertain creatures. The desire
for global order sits awkwardly alongside the body count of conquest and
foreign domination. Every empire is also haunted by the Polybian fear
of eventual collapse and its aftermath. This fear lies at the heart of
Benjamin Barber’s analysis of the current situation of the United
States—caught between its awesome military capability and the fear
that its use engenders both at home and abroad.

One of the pre-eminent contemporary American political philosophers,
Barber has previously written of the global confrontation between the
values of ‘Jihadist’ fundamentalism and terrorism, and the
globalised values of American-style consumerism (that he aptly named ‘McWorld’).
Fear’s Empire takes up this theme, but focuses more closely
on the American domestic response to the terrorist threat. Barber’s
thesis is not that there is such a thing as an American empire, but that
the current ‘war on terror’ constitutes ‘an empire of
fear’ opposed to the values of democracy (p. 33). America’s
‘preventive’ or ‘pre-emptive’ war on terror is
based on the generation of fear at home, a fear that undermines American
democracy and gives impetus to militarism and insularity. ‘Preventive
war’ also propagates fear abroad and unwittingly cultivates greater
anti-Americanism and more terrorism (p. 109). Barber’s refrain is
that there is no ‘military solution’ to terrorism. While terrorists
must be fought, the causes of terrorism have also to be removed, and the
only way to do this is to cultivate democracy.

For Barber the ‘war on
terror’ constitutes ‘an empire of fear’
opposed to the values of democracy.

Democracy, Barber suggests, is the only political mechanism that can
resolve differences peacefully and create a genuinely law-governed interdependence
of citizens across the globe. This is Barber’s view of the alternative
to the current phenomenon of commercial, neo-liberal globalisation. ‘CivWorld’
is his term for this alternative, embodying interdependence and global
citizenship based on a shared commitment to civilised values and international
law (pp. 217–232). A more successful strategy for combating terrorism
then, is a strategy of ‘preventive democracy’ (p. 54); not
simply the export of American democracy, but genuine and painstaking efforts
to foster, ‘democracy within nations and democracy in the conventions,
institutions, and regulations that govern relations among, between and
across nations’ (p. 164). Barber is clear that democracy cannot
be imposed at the point of a gun (p. 189), nor can it be achieved quickly
(p. 193). Ultimately, America’s destiny as a world power hinges
more heavily on its capacity to build democracy and shape world citizens,
than it does on its military might. Though he exhorts American citizens
and policy-makers to embrace this alternative strategy, its prospects
seem more remote today (after the re-election of President Bush) than
they were when Barber wrote.

Interestingly, all four authors agree that the future of the American
Empire (if we assume that there is one) looks bleak. Barber is reluctant
to label the United States an empire, but he argues convincingly that
its current strategy of ‘preventive war’ is unsustainable.
America’s special pleading for its right to defend itself through
pre-emptive strikes corrodes the multilateral structure of world order;
while its capacity to succeed in this ‘war’ requires a global
‘dominion’ that is no longer feasible in our globalised world
(Barber p. 119). Ferguson’s is perhaps the most pessimistic of the
four; after all, his book’s title not only lauds ‘the rise’,
but also predicts ‘the fall’ of America’s Empire. Mann,
Johnson, and above all Ferguson, hone in on the Empire’s domestic
Achilles heel; the United States simply lacks the strength in its domestic
economy and population growth to sustain global empire. The empire of
‘free trade’ is likely to be brought down by the spiralling
rates of household debt, and an ageing population (Ferguson pp. 268–85;
Mann pp. 50–51; Johnson p. 309).

Australians must determine how
much our interests coincide with serving in the imperial
projects of our powerful ally.

One of Polybius’ most astute ‘modern’ readers was Niccolo
Machiavelli. His solution to the nightmare of imperial corruption and
collapse was renewed commitment to citizen virtue in the founding of a
new political order. It is perhaps fitting then, that Chalmers Johnson
concludes on a distinctly Machiavellian note, by exhorting ‘the
people’ to ‘retake control’ and ‘cleanse’
the American polity of its imperial ‘corruptions’ before it
is too late (p. 312). Achieving this kind of transformation however, would
require something akin to Barber’s recommendation of a wholesale
renunciation of fear and the shabby rhetoric of American ‘exceptionalism’
and virtuous purity (p. 116).

As a small power allied to the United States, Australians will watch
with interest, but the prospects of a Machiavellian popular resurgence
seem remote at best. The United States today seems more committed than
ever to an imperial strategy of intervention in ‘trouble spots’
across the globe, and American decision makers will decide in their own
interests how to locate those ‘spots’ and what ‘trouble’
they present. As an avowed American ally, Australia must determine the
extent to which its own interests coincide with serving in the imperial
projects of its powerful ally. Australians, then, must consider how far
they wish to commit themselves to the global strategies of a power that
seems increasingly to embody the uncertainties and the perils of empire.

Bruce Buchan teaches history and moral
and political philosophy in the School of Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith
University. His research focuses on the relationship between war, state
formation, and empire in the development of Western political thought.
He is currently researching the evolution of concepts of sovereignty and
Indigenous sovereignty in colonial and post-colonial Australia and Canada.